HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-09-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2010. PAGE 5.
Aphotograph is neither seized nor taken
by force. It offers itself up. It is the
photo that takes you.
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
There is a photograph of a busy street in
France taken in 1838 or maybe 1839 by a
Frenchman named Louis Daguerre. If you
squint you can just make out, down in the left
hand corner, the blurry image of a man getting
his boots shined.
It is the first photograph in history to show a
human being.
How uncluttered – or at least un-chronicled
in images – our lives must have been before
that first camera shutter clicked. Today we are
besieged by photographs of people.
Billboards, television, movies, magazines,
newspapers, tweets. Most of the images that
worm their way into our consciousness are
fleeting and inconsequential but every so often
one snapshot has the power to seize our
attention and burn into our brains.
Like the one of the Afghan girl.
That photograph burst upon the world from
the cover of the July, 1985 issue of National
Geographic magazine. It showed the face,
smudged and feral, of a gaunt and haunting
adolescent, a ragged red scarf draped over her
head, two huge eyes like emerald lasers
blazing back at the lens. Her story line was as
bleak as her gaze. She was an anonymous
Afghan orphan living in a refugee camp.
Weeks earlier, Russian helicopter gunships
had screamed in low, obliterating her village
and machine-gunning her parents and
most of her neighbours. She had fled with her
siblings over the mountains to a camp in
Pakistan.
And somehow all of that – and more – was
in the photograph. You could see it in those
eyes. The picture was irresistible and
unforgettable. It went viral and eventually
National Geographic declared it “the most
recognized photograph” in the 122-year
history of the magazine.
The photo was the work of Steve McCurry,
an American freelance photographer, who
captured it in a refugee camp in Peshawar,
Pakistan. And it was taken on good old
Kodachrome – the film Paul Simon sang
about:
“They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny
day.”
The refrain of that song goes “Mama
don’t take my Kodachrome away”. Well,
mama had nothing to do with it, but
Kodachrome is gone. Kodak, opting to
put all its eggs in the digital basket,
discontinued the manufacture of its famous
product a year ago, with one final 20,000 roll
production run.
Then an amazing thing happened.
Steve McCurry, who’d spent his career and
made his name shooting with Kodachrome
film, contacted Kodak and asked if he could
have the very last roll off the production
line. Kodak executives gave McCurry the
final 36-exposure strip. He proceeded to
plan a photo shoot as if he had the last
roll of film in the world – which in a sense, he
did.
He spent six weeks circling the globe
looking for perfect subjects. He took a photo
of Ribari tribesmen in Rajasthan and
another of Bollywood stars in Mumbai. He
took a shot of Grand Central Station, of the
Brooklyn Bridge – and one of a taxi cab
the paint job of which exactly matched
that familiar, world-famous Kodachrome
yellow. McCurry shot his last three frames
in the small town of Parsons, Kansas,
which happens to be the home of the last
photo lab in the world to process Kodachrome
film.
McCurry did not include a recent photo of
the Afghan girl who made him famous. He’d
already tracked her down back in 2002 after a
17-year search. McCurry discovered that her
name was Sharbat Gula. She was no longer a
girl but a woman, lined and weary-looking,
living in a remote Afghan village with
her husband and three daughters. She lives
in accordance with the dictates of Purdah
meaning she could not be seen by men
without permission of the males in her
family. They allowed her to be photographed
by a female associate producer on
McCurry’s staff. Those famous eyes are
noticeably dimmer, having perhaps seen too
much.
On the bright side, her original iconic
photograph has come to symbolize the
suffering of an entire generation of Afghan
women and children, and moved the National
Geographic Society to establish the Afghan
Girls Fund, which channels money and
resources to educational programs in
Afghanistan.
Sharbat Gula had no idea she was
famous. She had never seen or even heard
about the photograph known around the
world.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
It was one of my more disappointing days at
The Citizen when I found out, after the fact,
that Canadian children’s author Robert
Munsch had taken Brussels Public School by
surprise with a visit last year.
It was disappointing because I wanted to
meet him. I grew up reading his books and can
say that his books were a childhood staple.
Now, in honour of Munsch’s 30th book, he
has opened the floor to students he visited last
year, letting them choose the subject of his
aforementioned milestone book.
As reported in this week’s issue of The
Citizen, Munsch is accepting voting on the
Scholastic Canada website (scholastic.ca/
pickamunsch) to choose subject matter from
three different stories, submitted by three
different classrooms across Canada, one of
them coming from last year’s Grade 3 class at
Brussels Public School, for his next book.
The Brussels submission, (Story #1 on the
website) follows a student who has to take the
class pet (a rat named Frankie) home for the
night to her family and father, who is a
Brussels farmer and isn’t particularly fond of
rats. When Frankie escapes from his cage, the
search begins, resulting in some big surprises.
Sounds like a good story to me and it sounds
like a tale that would fit right into the world of
Robert Munsch.
Munsch’s stories have featured interesting
characters, hilarious scenarios as well as
moments of true love amongst members of a
family, so why not Huron County? It’s a place
where family values have never lost their
importance and a place that’s home to plenty of
interesting characters.
Munsch’s characters have had a lasting
impact on millions of Canadian children over
the years, so perhaps with a victory later this
year, Munsch’s audience can be introduced to
Brussels and fall in love with it as they have
with so many other people, places and things
Munsch has brought to readers over the years.
For girls my age,The Paper Bag Princess
has become a Halloween costume staple and
Thomas’Snowsuit has become a memory in the
minds of new parents as they fasten the
snowsuits of their own children, but for me, it
will always be Love You Forever, Munsch’s
most touching book, that stays with me.
After his wife delivered two stillborn
children in 1979 and 1980, Munsch sat down
and wrote the four lines of prose that formed
the spine of a book that has made every
Canadian mother cry at least once, “I’ll love
you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as
I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”
A mother sings this to her child while
rocking him to sleep over the years, and when
he is grown and she takes ill, the child rocks his
mother, telling her that, “I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living,
my mommy you’ll be.”
Like so many other people, Munsch was
faced with incomprehensive adversity. And
like so many other people, he took his
adversity and turned it into something positive.
I’ll always remember my mom reading that
book to me. It taught me, even as a young
child, about the bond between a child and a
parent as life moves through the decades.
And now after a hiatus from writing and
revelations that he is obsessive-compulsive,
manic-depressive as well as a recovering
alcoholic and cocaine addict, Munsch is nearly
ready to write again and thinks that perhaps
Brussels should be a part of that process and
his redemption.
With what his books have meant to me
through my life, I think that’s pretty special.
Love You Forever
Dalton McGuinty’s best hope of
winning the 2011 election lies
ironically in the issue the Progressive
Conservatives are organizing to fight it on, the
one in which they keep calling him Premier
Dad.
Conservative leader Tim Hudak keeps
saying the Liberals under McGuinty are much
too intrusive in residents’ everyday lives,
showing enthusiasm for keeping dandelions
off lawns and ignoring more important issues
such as creating jobs.
Hudak has promised to get government out
of personal lives, homes, refrigerators and
wallets.
McGuinty has provided more laws to protect
residents than any previous premier.
Residents asked in an election whether they
want to keep them however, might not be in
the rush Hudak thinks they are to let them
them go.
Since McGuinty banned smoking in most
places people gather, more have become
aware of the dangers from those smoking
around them and would not want to return to
them.
The premier also has banned smoking in
cars with passengers aged under under
16 to avoid their being subjected to the now
well established dangers of second-hand
smoke.
But the Conservatives said in the legislature
debate they were in favour and cited a long list
of medical authorities who advocated the ban.
Hudak would be embarrassed if he proposed
to scrap it now.
McGuinty has stopped stores from
displaying cigarettes so they attract
particularly young buyers, which hurts
particularly convenience stores, but most
people will feel this a natural corollary.
McGuinty has been particularly active
on traffic safety. He has banned vehicle
operators speaking into hand-held phones
while driving, except to call 911 in
an emergency, but the Conservatives would
face a minor revolt for a start if they
tried to repeal it, because some in their
party advocated it even before the
Liberals.
Ontario also is now the fourth province to
have such a ban and a recent study by the
U.S. National Safety Council found 28 per
cent of traffic accidents there were caused
when drivers were talking on cellphones,
which would not provide evidence for any
Conservative call to scrap it.
McGuinty has required large trucks to be
fitted with devices that limit their speed, which
decreases operators’ profits, but car drivers
squeezed between long lines of giant vehicles
in their daily commutes appreciate this and it
reduces gas emissions.
The so-called nanny premier has required
children too big for toddlers’car seats, but too
small to be fully protected by seat belts, to
travel in booster seats.
Five provinces now require such booster
seats and there is a lot of evidence they have
saved lives.
To protect pregnant women, McGuinty has
ordered bars, restaurants and liquor and beer
stores to post signs warning alcohol can cause
defects including brain damage to their babies
– all parties supported this.
McGuinty has ordered elementary schools
to remove junk foods from their vending
machines and replace them with healthier
snacks, which helped prompt Hudak’s
complaint he is interfering in eating habits, but
parents will appreciate the province nudging
their children toward healthier diets.
In his most challenged move, McGuinty has
tried to restrict the multiplication of pit bulls,
which his government judged the most
dangerous of dogs, and has had difficulty
defining the breed, but it is an attempt in the
right direction.
The Conservative leader gets a lot
of chortles, naturally, when he derides
McGuinty as more enthusiastic about
eliminating dandelions from front lawns than
his government’s massive, record budget
deficit.
McGuinty has banned many chemical
fertilizers for cosmetic uses, but on the ground
they get in the water and air and poison the
environment.
Hudak’s big concern has to be, if he runs a
campaign based on attacking McGuinty’s laws
to protect, many voters will say they like and
want to keep them.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
McGuinty’s best hope to win
Politics is the art of preventing people from
taking part in affairs which properly
concern them.
– Paul Valery
Final Thought